


In Another Man's Shoes (But Not Really)

by Bianca MarOu (glazedmacguffin), fivefootnothing



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-30
Updated: 2010-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-17 16:29:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glazedmacguffin/pseuds/Bianca%20MarOu, https://archiveofourown.org/users/fivefootnothing/pseuds/fivefootnothing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor and... the Doctor find their clothes switched after encountering an anomaly.  Done as a collaborative prompt response.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Another Man's Shoes (But Not Really)

The first thing that greeted the Doctor was a pair of pristine plimsoll shoes, propped strangely up on the TARDIS console, too. How funny, that, considering his feet were still in them. A blink of beady blue eyes, and the Time Lord reached up to rub his hands over his face. He supposed he ought to right himself and begin a preliminary investigation into the events that could have led to such a bizarre incongruity... wait, why were there gaudy stripes leading up to those precariously perched plimsolls? Furthermore, once he turned his head to scan the room hazily why was the hat over on the coat rack entirely wrong? A panama hat, yes. But with the downward sloping brim of a fedora, and without his beloved handkerchief wound for the band around the crown.

Holding up his arms revealed a stretch of beige, ringed with orangeish red around the cuff. Even at this peculiar angle, with him on his back and his arms up over his head, the garment reached the middle of his hand right where the first joint of his thumb began.

What in Rassilon's name had happened?! Hadn't he put these away!

He rolled onto his stomach, face squished against the smooth white surface as he attempted to get his legs properly beneath him much like an ungainly ungulate on a frozen pond. "Benny..." he called, his voice not quite up to fully calling out at that moment. He was too thrown. It took until he was on quavery legs and unsteady feet that he could call with more earnest. " **Benny!!!** "

The response was quick. "What?!" She entered shortly after. Paused. At first she seemed alarmed, and then confused, and then irritated in microseconds flat after that. "...What did you do?!"

"I was going to ask you that!" He brushed off the arms of the frock coat, which brought the sleeves almost to his knuckles. Such a sulk was to be had.

"You can't be thinking this is my fault," she crossed her arms and stared at him with every incredulous fibre of her being, as if that would put him back in his right mind. Even if this look never really did have any effect.

"I'm not accusing anything! Not until I know what you were doing. I didn't put these on!"

"Read-ing." She enunciated slowly and pointedly. "I was in the library going over some of the books that you left in a disorganized pile in the back. I don't think reading can change your clothes!"

"Depends on what you were reading!" She had a point, though. Probably. He grumbled, plucking at the pullover and waddling like an uncomfortable duck toward her and the door to the corridor.

"Aren't you going to run some tests or something?" Bernice asked, following after the plodding Doctor as he passed her, heading into the depths of the TARDIS and away from the console room where the incident had apparently occurred. "Where are we going?"

"The wardrobe room. I need to be wearing something that fits." _Plod waddle plod._ "And something considerably more stylish."

She snorted. He chose to ignore it. He did note that was still following him, though, which indicated that she was worrying despite her silence on the subject. So he might as well tell her what he was doing in order to alleviate her concerns. "I had my straight-jacket on and was practising my escape artistry-" which very much was an art, thank you, "-when I blacked-out. The next thing I know, I was in this ill-fitting set of rags." He spoke as if he wasn't at all fond of the clothing, though it made him nostalgic, truthfully. Well, it would make him more nostalgic if he didn't feel quite so much like an anatid, and had occurred very much without his permission. He didn't approve of his clothing being altered in any fashion without his say-so.

"You were in your straight-jacket in the console room?"

"That's the first question you can come up with!?" He retorted hatefully.

"You're aware of the more obvious ones!"

He rolled his eyes, wrinkling his nose in an ungrateful sneer (he could be very unpleasant when he put his mind to it, especially when he was annoyed with a situation). He swung open the doors to the wardrobe room, ready to give Benny a speech on being helpful which he supposed would be about as well received as preaching etiquette to Ace, when opening the wardrobe room door stole his course of thought completely. Everywhere, walls to ceiling, was cricket gear. Cricket gear, and duplicates _of the same outfit that he was wearing_. This wasn't his wardrobe room at all, this was the cricket room she'd given him upon the death of his fourth self and regeneration into the fifth. He'd kept it for the entirety of that incarnation. But what was it doing here? "What? No! What is this?"

Today was going to be an incredible waste of his time. He could clearly predict this as well as any precognitive seer.

~*~*~

Floor.

A section of TARDIS floor pressed rather insistently against the Doctor’s face as he struggled to consciousness. His mind fought through fog but failed to offer up any useful memories, ultimately dismissing the circumstances with the mental equivalent of a cautious shrug.

Whatever happened, it was over for now, with his body somehow tumbling to the ground after he’d slipped into oblivion. One thing he knew for certain, however, was that he’d not fainted. Time Lords did not faint, and even if they were capable of such a pathetic loss of control, they’d not admit to it.

The Doctor did not faint.

He did not faint and now his arms were somehow bound and buckled securely against his chest.

What?

"What?"

He made the attempt to move, assuming his confinement temporary and easily solved, but the buckles refused to unbuckle and the straitjacket refused to fall away. Whatever circumstances led him to this predicament, he was rightly stuck.

Other things on his person seemed wrong. The snug cut of his trousers and his shoes. His hat, with its tight band and odd fit. In fact, all his clothing -- what he could make of it from beneath the straitjacket -- appeared made for a man of shorter stature.

He found it a battle to settle himself upright from his prone position on the floor, his ability to keep perfect balance exacerbated by his pinned down arms and the strange shoes on his feet.

Wingtips. Why wingtips?

The secret to straight jacket escape, if he recalled Houdini correctly, was to force the fasteners to be initially as loose as possible, but as he’d noted, this outfit was for a shorter man.

"Doctor?"

The young, earnest voice caused the Doctor to stop his desperate attempts to work himself free. "Erimem," he said, cautiously greeting her. He braced himself, muscles tensing ever tighter beneath his rough canvas confines as he prepared for the inevitable torrent of questions from the young woman’s ever-inquisitive mind.

Erimem, despite her initial shock at the Doctor’s appearance, edged closer to him. Her curiosity won out over any degree of apprehension she felt. "What are you doing?"

He blinked, his gaze scanning the rather incredulous circumstances he’d found himself in. "At the moment, I’m wondering why I hadn’t studied up on escapology more."

The bizarre piece of clothing enclosing the Doctor reminded Erimem of something a dangerous prisoner would wear. Why else keep the arms lashed so securely together? "You are bound, Doctor."

"Adroit observation," he sighed.

"Are you being punished?" It seemed the most logical question to ask a man trussed up like a fowl being readied for roasting.

"Absolutely, and I wish I knew why. I was wondering--"

"Yes?"

"I was wondering whether you’d wish to help."

Though Erimem found the buckles unfamiliar, Peri had already explained to her the utility of buttons and hooks and belts on many pieces of attire. She worked her fingers between the thick straps of leather, slipping them through the metal loops as she’d learnt to do.

The Doctor wriggled his way out of the jacket, arms comically flailing in those over-long sleeves before he flung the offending piece of clothing to the floor.

"What’s happened to your jumper?"

What had indeed happened to his jumper? Gone was the cream-coloured pullover with its thick, red trim along the neckline, the wrists, the hem. In its place was a sleeveless affair with row after complex row of red question marks meticulously knitted into the pattern. He swiftly lifted the slipover to check his braces beneath.

No question marks on those. Odd.

And yet he couldn’t help but think this entire outfit -- sans the addition of the straitjacket -- was rather familiar. He was certain he’d seen it (or a variation of it) somewhere before but couldn’t quite figure out the details, like snippets of melody from a half-remembered song.

Erimem raised herself on tip-toe to grab at the Doctor’s peculiar hat. "What an odd head garment! Might this be a sign of infiltration?" She understood her friend to have many enemies, despite his assurances that all he did was for the greater good. Still, in her experience, an enemy would just as soon run you through with a poison-tipped lance than...alter your regular garments.

"The TARDIS is the most secure place in the entire universe. She wouldn’t open her doors to just anybody. Besides, while we’re in the Time Vortex, it’s virtually impossible to influence it."

Erimem frowned. "‘Virtually’?"

"Well," the Doctor said after a moment’s pause, tugging at the hem of his slipover uncomfortably. "I suppose it could be possible for _another_ temporally-sensitive vessel, also traversing the Vortex at the exact same coordinates, to somehow merge with the TARDIS...? It’s happened before." Though he wouldn’t elaborate on that incident. Bad enough that he’d aged considerably during that encounter with his future self.

Erimem’s frown did not dissipate with the Doctor’s explanation. "Do you need new clothing?"

"Not in the slightest, and that’s entirely the trouble, isn’t it?" He definitely required his original clothing back. "I believe the Cricket Room isn’t very far." Cricket! He’d planned on getting a few hours of batting practice in before this rigmarole started! Just as well they were going to the supply room; he could easily fetch together a proper outfit as well as another bat.

"We should warn Peri, at any rate," added Erimem. "I do not wish for her to find herself in another’s clothing either."

"Quite, but first, I’d rather like to make sure I’m suitably dressed." He tugged the knitted garment off, noting the way it pitted into a shapeless, limp mess in his hands. The switch of clothing was most assuredly a temporo-spacial convergence of some sort, but why? What was its purpose?

And why was there an umbrella with a question mark-shaped handle just a few feet away?

He hooked his fingers on the curl of the question mark, the gesture sending the umbrella into a lazy whirl around his hand. The curve stopped well short of completion, and the umbrella clattered to the floor, causing the Doctor to stare at the object with a gaze enmeshed somewhere between confusion and dislike. The thing’s balance was entirely wrong, or it felt wrong to muscles more used to the stockiness of a wooden cricket bat.

Erimem beckoned him out of the console room, and he followed, eager to switch out of his abnormal garments and into more proper attire. Yes, he certainly needed his own clothes back, and then he’d ponder this predicament over a cup of tea.

If only he knew the reason for the switch in the first place, and where his own clothing had vanished off to.


End file.
